Prof. Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann has pioneered research into virtual humans over
the last 25 years. She obtained several Bachelor's and Master's degrees in
various disciplines (Psychology, Biology and Chemistry) and a PhD in Quantum
Physics from the University of Geneva. From 1977 to 1989, she was a Professor at
the University of Montreal and led the research lab MIRALab in Canada. She moved
to the University of Geneva in 1989, where she founded the Swiss MIRALab, an
internationally interdisciplinary lab composed of about 30 researchers.
Dr. Wolter has been a full professor of computer science at the University
of Hannover (since the winter term of 94/95) where he directs the
Division of Computer Graphics and Geometric Modeling called Welfenlab.
Before coming to Hannover, Dr. Wolter held faculty positions at the
University of Hamburg (in 94), MIT (89-93) and Purdue University in the
USA (87-89).
Prior to this he developed industrial expertise as a software and
development engineer with AEG in Germany (86-87). Dr. Wolter obtained his
Ph.D. in 1985 from the department of mathematics at the Technical
University of Berlin, Germany, in the area of Riemannian manifolds.
In 1980 he graduated in mathematics and theoretical physics at the
Free University of Berlin. At MIT Dr. Wolter codeveloped the geometric
modeling system Praxiteles for the US Navy from 1989 to 1993 and published
various papers that broke new ground applying concepts from differential
geometry and topology on problems and design of new methods used in
geometric modeling and CAD systems.
Since 1997 Prof. Wolter has also been
extending his research to include the area of Virtual Reality (VR)
resulting in two Ph.D.theses projects done by two members of the
Volkswagen VR research lab focusing on haptical and tactile man machine
interaction with applications in car design. Dr. Wolter is a research
affilliate of the MIT department of mechanical engineering.
Dr. Mandayam Srinivasan is the founder and director of the
Touch Lab
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dr. Srinivasan's research over the past 20 years on the science and
technology underlying information acquisition and object manipulation
through touch has played a pivotal role in starting and establishing the
multidisciplinary field of modern Haptics. He has been recognized
worldwide as an authority on haptic computation, cognition, and
communication in humans and machines, particularly to enhance human-machine
interactions in virtual environment systems. He has conducted pioneering
in skin biomechanics, tactile neuroscience, sensorimotor psychophysics,
haptic device design and multimodal rendering algorithms for real-time
human-computer interactions.
His demonstrations of novel applications of
this multidisciplinary research, such as virtual reality based medical
trainers in which surgeons can manipulate virtual organs, direct control
of robots over the internet from brain neural signals and real-time touch
interactions between users across the Atlantic have received international
news coverage. He has authored articles in leading journals in multiple
fields ranging from neuroscience to robotics and has been an invited
speaker at numerous scientific conferences.
His work has been featured in
print, radio, and television media around the world in news articles and
programs focused on cutting edge research in information technology and
its future prospects.
Marco Fontana was born in 1978 in Livorno. He received his degree from the
University of Pisa in 2003 with a diploma thesis on the 'Deign of a
low-cost mechanical head tracker'. Since than he has collaborate with
PERCRO in several internal and EU projects. His research interests are in
the field of mechanical design haptic interfaces and hand-held tools for
surgical applications. Currently he is a PhD candidate in Robotics for
Virtual Environment and member of the research division of PD "Perceptual
Devices" at PERCRO (PERCeptual ROBotics).
Mailis Mäkinen is working as a research scientist at SmartWearLab in
Tampere University of Technology. After graduated from Tampere University
of Technology in 1984 (M.Sc.) she worked several years in textile and
clothing industry and returned back to the university 1989.
Her research interests include interactive and intelligent textile
materials and clothing and her teaching consists of both smart textiles
and textile constructions and production technology.
Dr. Pascal Volino is a computer scientist, working at MIRAlab, University
of Geneva. He is actually working on new models for cloth animation,
involving versatile models for efficient simulations on situations
involving high deformation, wrinkling and multilayer garments. The
research is particularly focused on data structure, efficient collision
detection, robust simulation and interactive cloth manipulation. His
work is taking part of the several european projects, involving
creation and simulation of virtual garments.
Dennis Allerkamp studied mathematics and computer science at the
University of Hanover and wrote his diploma thesis on the computation of
medial sets respective curved surfaces in Euclidean space. He received
his diploma in mathematics (master's equivalent) in December 2004.
Since then he is working at the Computer Graphics Dept. of the University of
Hannover as a research assistant and Ph.D. candidate. His research interests
are in the area of haptics, human-computer interfaces, as well as medial
axis. Currently, he is mainly involved in the HAPTEX project.
Ian Summers is a member of the Biomedical Physics Group at the University of
Exeter, UK. He is also Director of the Peninsula MR Research Centre in
Exeter, and is involved with undergraduates and postgraduate programmes in
Physics and Radiography. His research interests include functional
magnetic-resonance imaging, auditory perception and tactile perception. He
has worked in the area of touch perception for over 25 years. His research
group in Exeter has developed a wide range of novel tactile stimulators,
including stimulator arrays for producing virtual touch sensations on the
fingertip.
Sylvain Cardin is a research assistant at the Virtual Reality Laboratory
(VRlab) at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).
He received a Master of Science in Embedded System engineering from the
Southampton Institute, and a Master of Science in Computer Science from the
Ecole Supérieure d'Ingénieur de Luminy (ESIL).
Lode Vanacken started this year as a PhD Student at the EDM,
a research facility at the Hasselt University in Belgium, and is member of the HCI Research group.
His research is about Multimodal interaction in Virtual Environments and the improvements that
haptics might add to 3D interaction. His Master's thesis described the current possibilities
of combining Cloth Simulation with Haptics. This ultimately lead to the work
submitted.
Dr. Edmond Prakash joined the School of Computer Engineering as an
Assistant Professor in 1997. He received his PhD in Computer Science
from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. After receiving
his PhD, he joined the State University of New York-Stony Brook, USA and
subsequently at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign as a
visiting scientist.
Currently, Dr. Prakash is an Assistant
Professor in Computer Science and he is also the Research Director for
the gameLAB at the school of Computer Engineering at Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore.
For more information please visit:
http://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/ASprakash/
Dr. Payandeh is a professor at the School of Engineering Science,
Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada for the past 15 years.
He is the director of the Experimental Robotics and Graphics
Laboratory where he carries out a unique blend of research in
advanced robotics and mechanics-based modeling and simulation.
He has patents in design of electromechanical devices such as haptic
user interfaces. For the past nine years, he has been leading a group
in developing a novel multi-modal training environment which can be
used for surgical and biological education.
He worked with the Mechanics and Haptics group of
the University of Evry, Val d'Essonee, France the Technical University
of Budapest and other research centers in Canada and Europe. For the past
14 years, he has been a member of the Institute of Robotics and
Intelligent Systems which is one of the Canadian Network Centers of
Excellence.
Junji Sone (Dr. of Engineering) is an associate professor of the department
of computer science at Tokyo Polytechnic University. He received BS and MS
degree from Toyohashi University of Technology. From 1985 to 1995, he was
researcher of TOSHIBA manufacturing engineering laboratory and researched
precision manufacturing technology and 3D CAD/CAM.
From 1996-1999, he was project leader of 3D CAD development in the TOSHIBA
Corp. He was also visiting resarcher of Keio Research Institute at SFC
1993-1998 and researched NURBS boundary Gregory patch, presented at CGI. His
major researches are virtual reality, haptic display, 3D CAD/CAM and
manufacturing engineering. Recently, main themes are virtual cutting,
development of haptic device and application of virtual reality.